March 29, 2014

Recent weeks have seen an outbreak of BDS activity on North
American campuses. Each student action has met a virulent reaction from Israel’s
defenders; each Zionist reaction prompts further action elsewhere.

The current round started on 24 February at Northeastern University
in Boston when
Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) repeated a tactic used on other
campuses and posted mock eviction notices under students’ doors. These notices:

bring Israel’s
campaign of demolition and eviction to the attention of all students. It
is frequently, and falsely, alleged that Jewish students are targeted for these
notices in an act of antisemitic intimidation. No evidence of this has ever
been produced and as the aim is to spread information such a tactic would be
counter-productive. Such claims were dismissed by the authorities at Rutgers
and Florida Atlantic Universities.

The
administration at Northeastern responded brutally. They suspended the SJP
chapter and involved the police and threatened the only women of colour in the group
that distributed the leaflets with expulsion-level charges. The threat of
expulsion was rescinded following a nationwide outcry. University president
Joseph Aoun recently protested, on spurious free speech grounds, against the
American Studies Association decision (see Newsletter
72) to adopt BDS; he obviously sees free speech on his own campus as less
vital.

This was followed on 1 March by a 798 to 585 vote by students
at Windsor University, Ontario, to support BDS. University
President, Alan Wildeman, immediately tried to undermine the validity of this
well supported vote making
claims of irregularity without providing evidence. On 12 March he announced
he had hired a lawyer to carry out an “investigation” of the BDS referendum.

Worse was to follow when Richard Spencer, an alumnus and
major donor posted: “I am reasonably certain that the majority, if not all, of
this small percentage of the student body are of the Muslim faith, which
promotes violence and hatred toward the Jews in the middle east.” Wildeman has
very correctly distanced himself from these comments. However, it provokes a
question about the due diligence the University conducts before accepting
donations if it had been pleased to accept funds from someone prone to making
such racist statements.

Despite these attacks the students at Windsor remain committed to putting their BDS
policies into effect.

Next the focus moved to Barnard
College in New
York, an affiliate of the prestigious Columbia University.
On 10 March Barnard/Columbia SJP kicked off Israel
Apartheid Week by hanging a banner
of a map of Palestine outside
Barnard Hall where groups conventionally post banners promoting their events.
The campus former Hillel president wrote “The banner features a map of Israel, the West Bank,
and the Gaza Strip, without any internal borders, colored uniformly green. That
is to say, C-SJP's banner, brazenly displayed on the front door of Barnard College, entirely erases the Jewish
State from the map. While I hesitate to use the term too loosely, I am at a
loss as to how to categorize this display as anything less than anti-Semitic.”
These claims are strange, not only because Israel frequently produces maps
without borders, although they tend to colour the territory blue. More weird
are Hillel protests against a map that does not detail Israel’s land grabs.

Barnard’s administration swung into prompt action on
receiving these pleas and tore down the banner. An action that accords with
their support for Zionist Birthright trips to Israel and tolerance of regular
events on campus supporting and celebrating the Occupation.

Hillel, the organisation that seeks to organise and support
Jewish students has itself become an arena of contest. Many Jewish students are
arguing that Hillel should represent all of them and not make support dependent
on a commitment to Israel’s
policies. National Hillel has been operating a policy of sanctioning any campus
group that attempts to host any speaker critical of current Israeli policy,
regardless of their attitude to the continuance of the state as a Jewish
entity. Harvard
Hillel even banned Avraham Burg, the former speaker of Israel’s Knesset. In reaction
campus Hillel groups are declaring themselves to be Open
Hillels and not subject to a rigid Zionist dogma.

On 18 March students at Loyola, a Jesuit
University in Chicago,
agreed
to divest from companies complicit in aiding the Israeli Occupation of
Palestine. They identified Caterpillar, General Electric, Hewlitt-Packard,
G4S, Raytheon, Elbit Systems, SodaStream, and Veolia. The vote at the student
senate was passed nem con with 26 votes in favour and 2 abstentions; it
followed a year long campaign by Loyola SJP and a petition signed by over 800
students. It is just a year since students at San Diego State
University, UC Irvine and
UC Riverside passed similar
resolutions.

The senate revisited the issue on 24 March and confirmed
their earlier decision, albeit by a smaller margin. Despite this the President
of the Student Association unilaterally vetoed
the resolution the following day. The spotlight moves back to the Senate
who can override the veto with a two-thirds majority.

On the same day students at the University
of Michigan started an indefinite occupation in protest at the student
government’s refusal to hold a vote on divestment. Their campaign led by SAFE,
Students Allied for Freedom and Equality ,forced the student government to
convene a
meeting on 18 March to hold a debate and a vote. Hundreds attended but the
debate was cut short and a motion to indefinitely delay a decision was passed
by 25 votes to 15 but it is significant that opponents did not have the
confidence to try and vote BDS down outright. Despite this setback the
campaigners are sure they have ignited a debate about Palestine
at Ann Arbor and increased knowledge about Israel’s
actions enormously. The campus newspaper The Michigan Daily printed an
editorial supporting SAFE’s campaign for the University to be more active
in investigating the ethical status of their investments. They intend to bring
the motion back and are confident of winning UM students to BDS.

Meanwhile Vassar has been convulsed by a row over a study
trip to Israel
and the settlements to investigate water supply organised as part of the
International Studies programme. On 6 February Vassar SJP picketed a meeting of
the class, some of the students in the class claimed they felt intimidated and
a meeting was held on 3 March to allow both sides to express their concerns.
SJP argued the case about why the trip was discriminatory and how it embedded US support for Israel. Philip Weiss has written
a detailed and nuanced account of the meeting and the events leading up to it
and the wider significance of the turmoil at Vassar for the development of the
campaign for Palestinian rights on US campuses.

On 19 March students at Arizona State
University joined the
campaign, again a motion moved by ASU Divest from Caterpillar Inc was postponed
but it will be raised again on 1 April.

This article is correct at the time of writing but this is a
fast changing situation which we will try to track on the BRICUP website and is well reported at Electronic Intifada and Mondoweiss and on twitter.[with Jews sans frontieres bringing up the rear]

Mike Cushman

28 March 2014

I got this from Mike Cushman early yesterday and as Mike said there could be changes on the way, in fact it's fair to say, in light of the above, Change is gonna come. Hey, that's a good idea for a song: